The Red Die

by Alex MacBeth

  Naiss took a long hard look at his friend. “Whatever you say, Matola.” Felisberto smiled and made his way to the door. “Stay in touch and try not to get blown up.” They gave each other their customary military salute on one leg, a joke both men had developed when they’d joined Special Squad. It meant they still had one foot in military life and one tentatively placed in post-conflict civilian life. Like Felisberto, who had first served in Niassa and later in Tete and Chimoio during the destabilisation conflict, Naiss had also seen the brutal horrors of the war: the food shortages, whole villages turned into mass graves, friends killed. Both were happy to be able to meet like this, in an office at the heart of a steadily growing yet ultimately calm nation and not in a military hospital, like the first time they had met.

  “How are Dona Paola and the kids?”

  Felisberto smiled and handed Naiss a bag of matapa sirisiri, a local culinary specialty from Mossuril that his mother had sent. He made a beeline for the door. Outside, Nampula continued to bristle in the late afternoon sun. The Girassol Hotel, part of a five-storey shopping mall where the city’s middle classes met for coffee breaks and dates, reflected a cream light off its tall antennas on the roof. Across the way, the church of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Nampula - nicknamed Gina Lollobrigida because of the House of God’s tall steeples’ resemblance to the voluptuous Italian star’s breasts – called the faithful to prayer, ready to absolve the city’s residents of that afternoon’s crimes.

  Felisberto drove to the edge of town and parked the police car in a safe compound for the night with a friend. He jumped in a taxi and returned to the city. He stopped outside Stokes’ flat: looking at the window he couldn’t help but want to break in.

  The light was off, the curtain closed.

  Felisberto put on a hat and a jacket and walked past the door again, careful not to linger in case Naiss was still watching him. About one hundred metres away on the other side of the road was a cafe and Comandante João Felisberto decided it would be as good a place as any to stake out Stokes’s former home until it got dark.

  He took a table outside, ordered a 2M beer and read the reports from the weekend’s Moçambola football clashes. Ferroviário de Nampula were top and local journalists were raving that the northern team could snatch the title from Maputo’s Maxaquene, where Eusebio had once played. Felisberto was always amazed at how far professional football had changed in his home country since he had played the ‘beautiful game’. What was then LIGA2M was now the sponsor-rich Moçambola. In Felisberto’s time, each player paid for his own boots. Sponsorship was practically unheard of and there were no more than half a dozen stadiums in the whole country. During his time at the helm in Beira, the Comandante would often pile his players onto chapas, local public transport, bent over like hunchbacks or squeezed between breastfeeding mothers, schoolchildren and chickens to go to away games.

  Felisberto ordered a prawn omelette with chips and another beer and read through the news headlines on the front cover of the paper. ‘Renamo insist on selecting head of defence forces’. ‘Questions asked in Parliament about new nature reserve’. ‘Beira railway opens again after line maintenance’. ‘Journalist kidnapped at Nacala Port’. Felisberto read the story. The journalist apparently disappeared inside the confines of the port but was not seen leaving. No body had been found, no ransom issued. The journalist’s family had also fled, claimed the article. Felisberto took a note on his wrist to call the central comando in Nacala and find out if Colonel Li was involved in the port kidnapping. He put down the paper and finished his food. He enjoyed the irony of reading the news before entering the flat of a reporter, albeit a dead one. What would he find in Stokes’ flat anyway? And should he really be breaking in? He consoled himself knowing that he had to before somebody else found whatever evidence there was.

  The Comandante ordered another beer and watched the sun disappear. He texted his mother Paola to tell her that he would not be home for dinner. Again. Three nights away from home in a week was the maximum that he, Sofia and Germano had decided upon together. It was Thursday evening and the Comandante hadn’t eaten dinner with his children for two weeks.

  An advert on the TV caught his attention. It was Palma promoting his charity, the Palma Foundation. “Looking after child and animal welfare in Mozambique,” announced a grinning Palma in the commercial. He was wearing a suit with his military honours. A caption read: Minister for Oil and Gas Jose Antonio Palma 1993-1996. Felisberto felt sick. How could such a crook pass himself off as a philanthropist?

  He paid his bill and walked in slow steps towards the flat Stokes had called home. The streets were much quieter now: a few phone credit vendors with bright yellow and red MCEL and Vodacom bibs ate their dinner on side-walks with taxi drivers. Above them, large billboards advertising the same two rival mobile phone networks provided a skyline to the low-thatch city. A team of female sweepers in blue jumpsuits swept the streets in a pack while a handful of dangerous faces lurked with intent, looking for an opportunity to peel away the night’s veneer of tranquillity. Felisberto found his. He tried the back of Stokes’ house and found a clump of loose bricks in the wall. With two strong kicks the bricks gave way and the Comandante was in Stokes’ flat before anyone could see him enter.

  It smelt of decay. Two rats scurried away as Felisberto stepped on the creaking wooden boards in the floor. The apartment was probably still as Stokes had left it. A computer occupied a desk beside a mound of papers. A small gas cooker, a handful of dirty plates. A mattress lay in a corner of the studio and a ketchup-stained Makonde wood mask hung on the wall. Everything was messy and smelt terrible.

  Something about the table in the corner of the room caught Felisberto’s eye. It was positioned awkwardly, obstructing access from one corner to another. Felisberto moved it and the small carpet below. Aha! The table had been hiding a secret wooden drawer in the floorboards. The Comandante broke the lock and removed the drawer’s contents and lay them on the floor to see them better in the dark: a stack of typed papers – Stokes’ articles at first glance, thought the Comandante; a fountain pen; a strange-looking disc, and an empty bottle of frangipani oil. Had Bia been here? Yes. An electricity bill had her name on it: Bia Manhica. Felisberto took the disc and stowed it in his pocket. He studied the papers but was interrupted by the sound of a floorboard creaking. He pulled out his gun.

  The Comandante tiptoed swiftly to behind the door and waited as the sound of footsteps approaching grew louder and louder, until he could hear somebody breathing on the other side of the door. His heart began to palpitate faster until a smell drifted his way. Before his senses could react the door was open and Felisberto had tackled the stranger to the ground. Only when he found himself sitting on top of the intruder did he realise it wasn’t the first time his hands had wrestled with that particular body.

  “Bia, what are you doing here?” asked Felisberto, freeing his victim from his grip. The figure looked up from the shadows below. “Ernesto, the journalist?” asked the muffled voice, still recovering. “Yes,” said the Comandante, remembering to maintain his undercover identity. “So a colleague dies and you come to steal his secrets?” Bia sneered, lifting herself onto a chair and reaching for her bag.

  “I had a key,” said Felisberto. “Stokes was not only a colleague but a friend,” he added. “The real question is what are you doing here?”

  “You’re lying.”

  “What?” said the Comandante, faux-outraged.

  “Well, I never met you,” she conceded suspiciously. “Stokes had many friends,” the Comandante responded, amiably.

  “I’d known John from shortly after he arrived in Mozambique,” began Bia. “I liked to hang around with some of the white guys working in Nampula and Pemba but the truth is they were all boring. Sure, they had money. Big cars.” Bia smiled. “I met Stokes at a party and he seemed different. He was funny, caring. I liked him. Agostino liked him too.”

  “Who is Agostino?”

 
; “My son. John was like a father to him. He was a good man.”

  “You loved him?” interrupted the Comandante.

  Bia looked down at her feet for inspiration.

  “Maybe I loved him. I liked him a lot.”

  “So why did you kill him?”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “So what were you doing at the scene of his death?”

  “Listen, I don’t know what sources you have or what kind of story you’re preparing to write, but this is bullshit. You don’t even ask questions like a journalist.”

  Felisberto knew that his cover would be tested at some point. But he’d prepared a trump card and he played it. The Comandante pulled an old voice recorder once given to him at Special Squad and pressed play.

  “I want to know who killed Stokes because he was a friend.”

  “Who did you say you write for?”

  “It’s a recently-opened overseas publication,” said Felisberto. “Online.”

  Bia pulled out her phone and looked at the Comandante. “And what is the name of this recently opened overseas publication?”

  “Listen,” said Felisberto, unsure of what to say next but certain in any case that he would have to go on the aggressive to avoid Bia using the Google and the Google once again leaving him barefaced. “In my job, I ask the questions.”

  Phew! It worked and Bia sat back in her chair. She leaned towards the Comandante, who could feel her breath in his face despite not seeing her in the dark.

  “So where did you meet Stokes?” said Bia, before opening a cupboard in Stokes’ flat and pouring herself a double whiskey. She lit a candle. Felisberto saw a figure move across the room in the dark and moments later Bia was sitting before him again, this time with ice in her drink.

  She knows her way around, thought Felisberto. Better keep up the act. “I met Stokes in Maputo. Good guy. Do you know what he was working on when he was killed?” asked the Comandante, eager to free himself from this uncomfortable impasse with Bia and get back to Mossuril with the strange disc to give to Samora. He would find out later why Stokes had stored frangipani oil beside the funny looking disc. If Bia, or whomever the perfume belonged to, was in anyway relevant to Minister Frangopelo and by proxy, national security, then Felisberto should get going and think later.

  “Look after the disc,” Bia said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Look after the disc. Stokes would have wanted someone to hear it.”

  “What disc? What are you talking about?” lied Felisberto.

  “He said he knew it would get us… get him, killed,” said Bia, tilting her head to sip from the ice block mixed with the remaining scotch.

  Felisberto heard the window shatter and instinctively threw himself to the ground. He stood still for a few seconds as glass flew around the room like a flock of Hitchcock’s birds. The Comandante lifted his head slowly before remembering he hadn’t been alone before the shots were fired.

  “Bia?”

  He moved through the shattered glass, led by the scent of frangipani. She had been killed with a single shot. Her blood wet the Comandante’s clothes as he held her hair and looked out at the Nampula night through the shattered window. A bullet cracked another window and ricocheted off the wall. Felisberto dropped Bia and ran: down the creaking stairs, out through the hole in the wall, through the back compound, across a zinc roof, down an alleyway, along a gutter, past a park, up two more streets and into the outskirts of town. He ran for at least twenty more minutes, never looking back, until he realised he had reached the railway line.

  He checked into a motel on the edge of the city. Tomorrow he would worry about returning to Mossuril. Tomorrow he would work out who had killed Stokes and Bia. Tomorrow he would listen to the disc. He felt tired yet he knew the ball had only started rolling. Whoever had killed Bia would soon find him too.

  Chapter Nine

  The Comandante awoke to what sounded like knocks on the door. He listened. It was rain beating down on the zinc roof. He lit a cigarette and took a routine check of his surroundings. The door was bolted, the window curtain was closed and his gun was on the side table within arm’s reach. His t-shirt was covered in Bia’s blood. Screw this, he thought. Is this how a police comandante has to live: as a fugitive in his own country? His brain raced at 5000 rpm until he eventually fell asleep and awoke sweating around 8.15am. Nampula hadn’t overslept. Salesmen selling razors, mobile phones and old books had set up their street stalls beside larger stores that occupied the shops behind them. The shops sold all kinds of favourites: cheap Chinese motorbikes and generators, electric wiring and mattresses, water tanks and car suspensions.

  Felisberto looked out of the window at the statue of Samora Machel. A mural beside it depicted the same president, Mozambique’s first, arm raised, beard uncombed, smile intact. We Mozambicans are a proud people, thought Felisberto. But then history has a wicked way of shaping people.

  He dressed and gave a more than middle-sized receptionist 200 meticais to bring tea and, if possible, a t-shirt. He had survived battlefronts, shoot-outs and had once been accustomed to gunfire, but the shots from the night before still rattled the Comandante. Why had they gone for Bia? What did she know? Was Stokes’ house bugged? Had she killed Stokes? Was she part of the supposed game? And why hadn’t he grabbed Stokes’ articles? Felisberto couldn’t help but feel that he had missed a vital detail at Stokes’ apartment. He also knew he couldn’t go back.

  “Bom dia,” said a voice at the door. The Comandante took his tea and his new t-shirt, paid the porter who had delivered it and rejoined the circuitous path of his thoughts. Whoever had killed Bia would have seen him and now knows he, Comandante João Felisberto, had been inside Stokes’ house. Was it Li, the former Chinese Red Army Colonel? Felisberto had only really seen Li in photos at the offices of Xin and Hua in Pemba and he couldn’t bring himself to imagine the lethal killer that Naiss had described. But Felisberto knew from the accuracy with which Bia had been murdered that he was dealing with somebody who had taken lives before – a trained killer.

  Someone knocked at the door. Felisberto grabbed his gun and waited.

  “Will you be checking out today, sir?” Felisberto contemplated the question and put his gun on the table again. What should he do? If a killer was stalking him and he went back to Mossuril, he would bring danger towards his children and his community, the opposite of what he was paid to do. But where else should he go? Should he just pack up and run because a former Chinese colonel had a bullet inscribed with his name?

  Felisberto drank the last of his tea, gave the cup to the porter and looked out of the window. Sofia had given him an apple and, while wondering who had given it to her before she re-gifted it to him, he peeled it with his pocketknife, carefully removing the skin in one continuous coil. He’d have to lay low for a while.

  The Comandante looked at a torn map of Mozambique on the wall and pointed to the slim left tip that forms part of the country’s catapult shape. “Tete,” he whispered. That’s where he would go. He would visit Julio, who he had worked with at Special Squad. Julio still sent Christmas cards every year inviting him to visit.

  He would tell the boys at the office that he was feeling sick and had gone to stay with his aunt in Mocuba. He had stored up hundreds of days off in the last eight years of service. His mother would be a bit more difficult to dupe. The Comandante rarely took holidays and was never sick, which left his colleagues suspicious when he called and reported a complicated malaria to Albertina at the old comando. “Tell Samora to call me for anything important. I’ll be back before then anyway. Ciao,” said Felisberto and hung up. The Comandante washed, rolled his bloodstained t-shirt into a ball and put Stokes’ disc, still in its box, in his pocket. He wondered why the box had to be so big, advertising that it was somehow even waterproof. Not in Mozambique’s torrential rains, Felisberto chuckled to himself. He was getting distracted. At some point he would have to listen to the disc and digest the horrible t
ruth it contained, but for now he satisfied himself with it being under his ownership. He would find the device needed to listen to it soon. The Comandante looked at the small disc and wondered what it even was. He nicknamed it disco pequeño. Samora would know exactly what disco pequeño was and how to operate it. This final thought irritated the Comandante. He walked down the stairs to reception to pay his bill. Comandante João Felisberto was now officially on the run.

  Years of police life in Mossuril, where a whole day could pass without a single misdemeanour being reported, had acclimatised the Comandante to a snail-paced rhythm of desultory law-enforcement. Having to dodge bullets and avoid exploding offices were not regular duties.

  The Comandante now realised that what he was involved in could get him hurt. Worse still, his family could be… A side of him wished that he could just return safely to his children. He would take them for a walk up the beach. He would make them egg sandwiches and they would swim out to the dune in the bay with the cool-box. Felisberto called his mother.

  “Mama, I need you to look after the kids,” he said, avoiding any pleasantries. Phone credit was expensive and pleasantries free face-to-face. “When will you be back, son?” Dona Paola asked. “Soon,” said Felisberto. “Very soon. An old colleague has invited me to Tete, he needs me for something and I haven’t seen him since the war, so I can’t refuse.” His mother knew he was lying but she knew it was only because he had to. “Are you in trouble, son?” she asked instinctively. “No, no I’m fine … It’s just a social visit… but best not to tell anyone where I’ve gone. I called in sick at the comando. Are the kids okay?”

  “They are fine.” A pause hung on the line before disappearing. “Don’t be long, Felis.” Paola hung up.

  “Taxi, sir?” said a voice from the sidewalk. Why not, thought Felisberto. “Where to?” the driver asked, loading the Comandante’s carpetbag into the boot. It was the same bag he had carried drugs in twenty years earlier. Now all it contained was a clean pair of boxer shorts and a pair of socks, a miswak stick, a bar of soap, a stick of cigarettes and Stokes’ strange disc. “Where to, boss?” the driver repeated. “Immigration,” said Felisberto.